1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to processing a multi-view image, and more particularly, to encoding and decoding a multi-view image for a multi-view display apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A multi-view image processing system geometrically corrects images taken through a plurality of cameras and performs spatial synthesis and other processes, thereby providing a variety of views in multiple directions to users.
Multi-view image encoding and decoding standards normally utilize An H.264 or multi-view coding (MVC) codec generally utilizes multi-view image encoding and decoding standards.
In multi-view image encoding, images input through a plurality of cameras providing multi-view images are encoded at the same time. Also, the multi-view image is encoded as a compressed stream, by using temporal dependency and the cameras' inter-view spatial dependency.
The compressed stream is displayed on a display apparatus according to the performance of a decoder and selection by a user.
The display apparatus appropriately decodes an input image in consideration of the dependency between views, and displays the decoded image on a screen. In this case, the display apparatus can display the image by using a desired single view, or can display a stereo image, by using two views.
Also, a display apparatus which usually supports one view displays a plurality of views, by switching from one view to another view from among the plurality of views.
However, a multi-view display apparatus which supports a plurality of views should form a stereo pair image in order to achieve a stereo effect.
In this exemplary embodiment, when a stereo image is formed by selecting two views, it is efficient for the multi-view display apparatus to select a pair of images in which the left view and the right view have a proper distance from each other in order to achieve a stereo effect. The multi-view display apparatus, however, cannot achieve a stereo effect between two vertically positioned views.
However, multi-view display apparatuses in the related art cannot specify a pair of images, and cause delays in order to sequentially form pairs with a plurality of views.